as attracting notice by a most ingenuous and intelligent countenance,
by the liveliness of his manners, and by such indications of mental
activity as could not be misinterpreted. His appearance was that of
health, yet not of robust health, and he suffered from paroxysms of
pain, during which he would roll about on the carpet in the utmost
agony; but no sooner had the pain subsided than he would resume his
part in conversation with as much cheerfulness and vivacity as before
he had been thus interrupted.
"At that period, though he was strong and active, he often suffered
extremely from the pain to which I have before adverted, and which was
his sad companion through life. On entering his room to commence our
reading, I could at once tell whether or not his night had been
refreshing; for if it had, I found him at the table, the books to be
studied ready, and a vacant chair set for me. If his night had been
restless, and the pain still continued, I found him lying on the sofa,
or more frequently upon three chairs, on which he could obtain an
easier position. At such seasons, scarcely ever did a complaint issue
from his lips; but inviting me to take the sofa, our reading
commenced. They, however, who knew Mr. Hall can conjecture how often,
if he became interested, he would raise himself from the chairs, utter
a few animated expressions, and then resume the favorite reclining
posture. Sometimes, when he was suffering more than usual, he proposed
a walk in the fields, where, with the appropriate book as our
companion, we could pursue the subject. If _he_ was the
preceptor, as was commonly the case in these peripatetic lectures, he
soon lost the sense of pain, and it was difficult to say whether the
body or the mind were brought most upon the stretch in keeping up with
him.
"During the early months of the year 1803, the pain in Mr. Hall's back
increased both in intenseness and continuity, depriving him almost
always of refreshing sleep, and depressing his spirits to an unusual
degree.
"Often has he been known to sit close at his reading, or yet more
intently engaged in abstract thought, for more than twelve hours in
the day; so that when his friends have called upon him, in the hope of
drawing him from his solitude, they have found him in such a state of
nervous excitement as led them to unite their efforts in persuading
him to take some mild narcotic and retire to rest. The painful result
may be anticipated. This noble mind lost its equilibrium.
"Throughout the whole of Mr. Hall's residence at Leicester, he
suffered much from his constitutional complaint; and neither his habit
of smoking nor that of taking laudanum seemed effectually to alleviate
his sufferings. It was truly surprising that this constant, severe
pain, and the means adopted to mitigate it, did not in any measure
diminish his mental energy.
"In 1812 he took from fifty to one hundred drops every night. Before
1826 the quantity had increased to one thousand drops.
"Mr. Hall commonly retired to rest a little before eleven o'clock; but
after his first sleep, which lasted about two hours, he quitted his
bed to obtain an easier position on the floor or upon three chairs,
and would then employ himself in reading the book on which he had been
engaged during the day. Sometimes, indeed often, the laudanum, large
as the doses had become, did not sufficiently neutralize his pain to
remove the necessity for again quitting his bed. For more than twenty
years he had not been able to pass a whole night in bed. When this is
borne in mind it is truly surprising that he wrote and published so
much; nay, that he did not sink into dotage before he was fifty years
of age.
"Early on the Sunday morning (Mr. Addington says) being requested to
see him, I found him in a condition of extreme suffering and
distress. The pain in his back had been uncommonly severe during the
whole night, and compelled him to multiply at very short intervals the
doses of his anodyne, until he had taken no less than 125 grains of
solid opium, equal to more than 3000 drops, or nearly four ounces of
laudanum!! This was the only instance in which I had ever seen him at
all overcome by the soporific quality of the medicine; and it was even
then hard to determine whether the effect was owing so much to the
quantity administered as to the unusual circumstance of its not having
proved, even for a short time, an effectual antagonist to the pain it
was expected to relieve.
"The opium having failed to assuage his pain, he was compelled to
remain in the horizontal posture; but while in this situation a
violent attack in his chest took place, which in its turn rendered an
upright position of the body no less indispensable. The struggle that
ensued between these opposing and alike urgent demands became most
appalling, and it was difficult to imagine that he could survive it,
especially as from the extreme prostration of vital energy, the remedy
by which the latter of these affections had often been mitigated--
viz., bleeding--could not be resorted to. Powerful stimulants, such as
brandy, opium, ether, and ammonia, were the only resources, and in
about an hour from my arrival we had the satisfaction of finding him
greatly relieved."
The following references to the opium habits of Hall are found in
"Gilfillan's Literary Portraits."
"Owing to a pain in his spine, he was obliged to swallow daily great
quantities of ether and laudanum, not to speak of his favorite potion,
tea. This had the effect of keeping him strung up always to the
highest pitch; and, while never intoxicated, he was everlastingly
excited. Had he been a feeble man in body and mind the regimen would
have totally unnerved him. As it was, it added greatly to the natural
brilliance of his conversational powers, although sometimes it appears
to have irritated his temper, and to have provoked ebullitions of
passion, and hasty, unguarded statements.
"A gentleman in Bradford described to us a day he once spent there
with Hall. It was a day of much enjoyment and excitement. At the close
of it Hall felt exceedingly exhausted, and on retiring to rest asked
the landlady for a wine-glass half full of brandy. 'Now,' he says, 'I
am about to take as much laudanum as would kill all this company; for
if I don't, I won't sleep one moment.' He filled the glass with strong
laudanum, went to bed, and enjoyed a refreshing rest."
JOHN RANDOLPH.
The eccentricities of no man in America who has been at all
conspicuous in public life approach the eccentricities of the late
John Randolph of Roanoke. Diseased from his birth, with a temperament
of the most excitable kind, he seems during the greater part of his
days to have lived only just without the bounds of confirmed
insanity. His constitutional infirmities were peculiarly the
infirmities that find relief in opium; and it has generally been
understood that his addiction to the habit was of many years'
continuance and lasted to his death. I have been assured by a Virginia
gentleman that when, in one of his last days, he directed his servant
to write upon a card for his inspection the word "REMORSE," Randolph
was understood to have in mind his excessive use of opium. His
biographer, Mr. Hugh Garland, however, has given apparently as little
prominence to his habit in this respect as was consistent with any
mention of it whatever. The letters which follow contain nearly all
the information that we can gather from this source. Under date of
February, 1817, Randolph says:
"The worst night that I have had since my indisposition commenced. It
was, I believe, a case of _croup_ combined with the affection of
the liver and the lungs. Nor was it unlike tetanus, since the muscles
of the neck and back were rigid, and the jaw locked. I never expected,
when the clock struck two, to hear the bell again. Fortunately, as I
found myself going, I dispatched a servant (about one) to the
apothecary for an ounce of laudanum. Some of this, poured down my
throat, through my teeth, restored me to something like life. I was
quite delirious, but had method in my madness; for they tell me I
ordered Juba to load my gun and to shoot the first 'doctor' that
should enter the room; adding, 'they are only mustard-seed, and will
serve just to sting him.' Last night I was again very sick; but the
anodyne relieved me. I am now persuaded that I might have saved
myself a great deal of suffering by the moderate use of opium."
Under date of March of the same year he writes to a friend: "No
mitigation of my worst symptoms took place until the third day of my
journey, when I threw physic to the dogs, and instead of opium, etc.,
I drank, in defiance of my physician's prescription, copiously of cold
spring water, and ate plentifully of ice. Since that change of regimen
my strength has increased astonishingly, and I have even gained some
flesh, or rather skin."
In a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough, dated May 30, 1828:
"I write again to tell you that extremity of suffering has driven me
to the use of what I have had a horror all my life--I mean opium--and
I have derived more relief from it than I could have anticipated. I
took it to mitigate severe pain, and to check the diarrhea. It has
done both; but to my surprise it has had an equally good effect upon
my cough, which now does not disturb me in the night, and the diarrhea
seldom until toward day-break, and then not over two or three times
before breakfast, instead of two or three-and-thirty times.
His biographer, speaking of the state of his health in the autumn of
1831, says, "Mr. Randolph made no secret of his use of opium at this
time: 'I live by if not upon opium,' said he to a friend. He had been
driven to it as an alleviation of a pain to which few mortals were
doomed. He could not now dispense with its use. 'I am fast sinking,'
said he, 'into an opium-eating sot, but, please God! I will shake off
the incubus yet before I die; for whatever difference of opinion may
exist on the subject of suicide, there can be none as to _rushing
into the presence of our Creator_ in a state of drunkenness,
whether produced by opium or brandy.' To the deleterious influence of
that poisonous drug may be traced many of the aberrations of mind and
of conduct so much regretted by his friends during the ensuing winter
and spring. But he was by no means under its constant influence."
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.
So little is known, beyond what appears in the following brief
notices, of the opium habits of this distinguished philanthropist,
that their citation here would be of little service to opium-eaters,
except as they tend to show that the regular use of the drug in small
quantities may sometimes be continued for many years without apparent
injury to the health, while the same difficulty in abandoning it is
experienced as attends its disuse by those whose moderation has been
less marked.
The son of Wilberforce, in the "Life" of his distinguished father,
says: "His returning health was in a great measure the effect of a
proper use of opium, a remedy to which even Dr. Pitcairne's judgment
could scarcely make him have recourse; yet it was to this medicine
that he now owed his life, as well as the comparative vigor of his
later years. So sparing was he always in its use, that as a stimulant
he never knew its power, and as a remedy for his specific weakness he
had not to increase its quantity during the last twenty years he
lived. 'If I take,' he would often say,'but a single glass of wine, I
can feel its effect, but I never know when I have taken my dose of
opium by my feelings.' Its intermission was too soon perceived by the
recurrence of disorder."
In a letter from Dr. Gilman, already quoted in the "Reminiscences of
Coleridge," he says, speaking of the difficulty of leaving off opium,
"I had heard of the failure of Mr. Wilberforce's case under an eminent
physician of Bath," etc.
A HALF CENTURY'S USE OF OPIUM.
The case of Wilberforce, however, is thrown into the shade by that of
a gentleman now living in New York, whose use of opium has been much
more protracted than that of the British philanthropist, and who
affirms that opium, instead of weakening his powers of mind or body in
any respect, has, on the contrary, been of eminent service to both.
The compiler would have been glad, in the general interests of
humanity, to omit any reference to this case; but it is a legitimate
part of the story he has undertaken to tell; and however this isolated
exception to the ordinary results of the opium habit may be perverted
as a snare and delusion to others, it can not honestly remain
untold. In the compiler's interview with this gentleman, now in the
one hundred and third year of his age, he was impressed with the
evidences of a physical and mental vigor, and a high moral tone, which
is rarely found in men upon whom rests the weight of even eighty
years. Whatever may be thought of the convictions of the compiler, as
to the enormity of the injury inflicted upon society from the habitual
and increasing use of opium, he can not reconcile it to his sense of
fairness to omit distinct reference to this most anomalous case. The
gentleman in question was born in England in the year 1766, and
received his first commission in the army in 1786. Serving his country
in almost every military station in the world where the martial drum
of England is heard--in India, at the Cape, in the Canadas, on guard
over Napoleon at St. Helena--he illustrates, as almost a solitary
exception, the fact that a use of opium for half a century, varying in
quantity from forty grains daily to many times this amount, does not
_inevitably_ impair bodily health, mental vigor, or the higher
qualities of the moral nature. The use of opium was commenced by this
gentleman in the year 1816, as a relief for a severe attack of
rheumatism, and has been continued to the present time, with the
exception of a very brief period when an eminent physician of Berlin,
at the suggestion of the late Chevalier Bunsen, the Prussian
Embassador to Great Britain, endeavored to break up the habit. In this
effort he was unsuccessful, and the case remains as a striking
illustration of the weakness of that physiological reasoning which
would deduce certain phenomena as the invariable consequences of a
violation of the fundamental laws of health. Until the chemistry of
the living body is better understood, medical science seems obliged to
accept many anomalies which it can not explain. About all that can be
said of such exceptional cases is this: In the great conflagrations
which at times devastate large cities, some huge mass of solid masonry
is occasionally seen in the midst of the wide-spread ruin, looking
down upon prostrate columns, broken capitals, shattered walls, and the
cinders and ashes of a general desolation. The solitary tower
unquestionably stands; but its chief utility lies in this,--that it
serves as a striking monument of the appalling and wide-spread
destruction to which it is the sole and conspicuous exception.
WHAT SHALL THEY DO TO BE SAVED?
Most of the preceding pages were already prepared for the press, when
the attention of the compiler was attracted by a very remarkable
article in _Harper's Magazine_ for August, 1867, entitled, "What
Shall They Do to be Saved?" The graphic vividness of the story, as
well as the profound insight and wide experience with which it was
written, led me to solicit from the unknown author the addition of it
to the pages of my own book. It proved to be from the pen of Fitz Hugh
Ludlow, already recognized by the public as a writer of eminence, both
in science and letters. The permission being freely accorded, I was
still further moved to ask that he would give me a statement of the
method pursued by him in dealing with the class to which it refers.
The letter following his article was his response to my request. It
will be seen to contain an outline of his views upon the subject to
which he has devoted some years of study and practice, and is
especially valuable as embodying the germ of a plan by which,
according to his growing conviction, the opium-eater can alone be
saved. As the conclusions of a writer who seems to the compiler to be
singularly intelligent and definite in his knowledge of this most
interesting and difficult field of disease and treatment, it needs no
further recommendation to the attention of the reader. Since the
publication of his August article, a multitude of letters received
from all portions of the country, asking his advice and assistance in
such cases as this book describes, has left a profound conviction upon
his mind of the most crying need of the establishment of an
institution where opium-eaters can be treated specially. In this view
of the urgent necessities of the case, the compiler most heartily and
earnestly concurs.
* * * * *
I have just returned from forty-eight hours' friendly and professional
attendance at a bedside where I would fain place every young person in
this country for a single hour before the Responsibilities of Life
have become the sentinels and Habit the jailer of his Will.
My patient was a gentleman of forty, who for several years of his
youth occasionally used opium, and for the last eight has habitually
taken it. During these eight years he has made at least three efforts
to leave it off, in each instance diminishing his dose gradually for a
month before its entire abandonment, and in the most successful one
holding the enemy at bay for but a single summer. In two cases he had
no respite of agony from the moment he dropped till he resumed it. In
the third case, a short period of comparative repose succeeded the
first fiery battle, but in the midst of felicitations on his victory
he was attacked by the most agonizing hemicranial headaches (resulting
from what I now fear to have been already permanent disorganization of
the stomach), and went back to his nepenthe in a state of almost
suicidal despair, only after the torture had continued for weeks
without a moment's mitigation.
He had first learned its seductions, as happens with the vast majority
of Anglo-Saxon opium-eaters, through a medical prescription. An attack
of inflamed cornea was treated with caustic applications, and the pain
assuaged by internal doses of M'Munn's Elixir. When my friend came out
of his dark room and bandages at the end of a month he had consumed
twenty ounces of this preparation, whose probable distinction from the
tincture known as laudanum I point out below in the note. [Footnote:
Mr. Frank A. Schlitz has kindly made for me a special analysis of
M'Munn's Elixir, which seems to prove that the process of its
preparation amounts to more than the _denarcotization_ of opium,
which is spoken of on the wrapper of each vial. As nearly as can be
ascertained, M'Munn's Elixir is simply an aqueous infusion of
opium--procured by the ordinary maceration--and preserved from
decomposing by the subsequent addition of a small portion of
alcohol. _Narcotin_ being absolutely insoluble in water is
eliminated as the circular says. This fact alone would not account for
the difference between its action and that of laudanum. This is
explained by the fact that all the other alkaloids possess diverse
rates of solubility in water, and exist in M'Munn's Elixir in very
different relative proportions from those which they bear to each
other in the alcoholic tincture called laudanum.] Here it may not be
superfluous to say that the former preparation has all the essential
properties of the latter, save certain of the constipatory and
stupefying tendencies which, by a private process known to the assigns
of the inventor, have been so masked or removed that it possesses in
many cases an availableness which the practitioner can not despise,
though compelled by the secrecy of its formula to rank it among quack
medicines. The amount of it which my friend had taken during his
month's eclipse represents an ounce of dry gum opium--in rough
measurement a piece as large as a French billiard ball. I thus
particularize because he had never previously been addicted to the
drug; had inherited a sound constitution, and differed from any other
fresh subject only in the intensity of his nervous temperament. I wish
to emphasize the fact that the system of a mere neophyte, with nothing
to neutralize the effects of the drug save the absorbency, so to
speak, of the pain for which it was given, could so rapidly adapt
itself to them as to demand an increase of the dose in such an
alarming ratio. There are certain men to whom opium is as fire to
tow, and my friend was one of these. On the first of October he
sensibly perceived the trifling dose of fifty drops; on the first of
November he was taking, without increased sensation, an ounce vial of
"M'Munn" daily.
From that time--totally ignorant of the terrible trap which lay
grinning under the bait he dabbled with--he continued to take opium at
short intervals for several years. When by the physician's orders he
abandoned "M'Munn," on the subsidence of the eye-difficulty, his
symptoms were uneasy rather than distressing, and disappeared after a
few days' oppression at the pit of the stomach and a few nights'
troubled dreaming. But he had not forgotten the sweet dissolving views
at midnight, the great executive achievements at noonday, the heavenly
sense of a self-reliance which dare go anywhere, say any thing,
attempt any thing in the world. He had not forgotten the nonchalance
under slight, the serenity in pain, the apathy to sorrow, which for
one month set him calm as Boodh in the temple-splendors of his
darkened room. He had not forgotten that the only perfect
_peace_ he had ever experienced was there, and he remembered that
peace as something which seemed to blend all the assuaged passion and
confirmed dignity of old age with that energy of high emprise which
thrills the nerves of manhood. He had tasted as many sources of
earthly pleasure as any man I ever knew; but the ecstasies of form and
color, wine, Eros, music, perfume, all the luxuries of surrounding
which wealth could purchase or high-breeding appreciate, were as
nothing to him in comparison with the memory of that time on which his
family threw away their sympathy when they called it his "month of
_suffering."_
Accordingly, without much more instinct of concealment than if it were
an occasional tendency to some slight convivial excess, he had resort
to M'Munn, in ounce doses, whenever the world went wrong with him. If
he had a headache or a toothache; if the weather depressed him; if he
had a certain "stint" of work to do without the sense of native vigor
to accomplish it; if he was perplexed and wished to clear his head of
passion; if anxieties kept him awake; if irregularities disturbed his
digestion--he had always one refuge certain. No fateful contingency
could pursue him inside M'Munn's enchanted circle. He was a young and
wealthy bachelor, living the life of a refined _bon vivant;_ an
insatiable traveller, surrounded by flatterers, and without a single
friend who loved him enough to warn him of his danger excepting those
who, like himself, were too ignorant to know it. After three years of
dalliance he became an habitual user of opium, and had been one for
eight years when I was first called to him.
By the time that the daily habit fastened itself he had learned of
other opiate preparations than M'Munn's, and finding a certain
insufficiency characterize that tincture as he increased the size of
the dose, had recourse to laudanum, which contains the full native
vigor of the drug unmodified. This nauseated him. He had the same
experience with gum opium, opium pills, and opium powder; so that he
was driven to that form of exhibition which sooner or later naturally
strikes almost every opium-eater as the most portable, energetic, and
instantaneous--morphia or one of its salts. My friend usually kept the
simple alkaloid in a paper, and dissolved it as he needed it in clear
water, sometimes substituting an equivalent of "_Magendie's
Solution_," which contains sixteen grains of the salt diffused
through an ounce of water by the addition of a few drops of sulphuric
acid. When I first saw him he had reached a daily dose of twelve
grains of sulphate of morphia, and on occasions of high excitement had
increased his dose without exaggerating the sensible effect to nearly
twenty. The twelve which formed his habitual _per diem_ were
divided into two equal doses, one taken immediately after rising, the
other just about sundown.